...BAKER, CALIFORNIA: HOLE IN THE WALL
The holes punched through the bathroom door make me
yearn for the Old Route 66 that is no more; no more conduit for
the adventuresome disenfranchised whose coagulated daydreams
collectively flowed East and West through her asphalt vein. Say it
with me, "Go, man, go," everyone eventually coming to a halt in a
town just like Baker. Including its claim to fame, the "Tallest
Thermometer in the World," even according to The Book of World
Records.
To measure the pulse of this particular isolated ecosystem,
one need only look deeply into the crevaces on the face of the
down-and-out last-dime red-haired broad who sits crooked on a
stool behind a worn slab of something plastic, fingering the keys
of the cash register, hips loaded, cocked and ready to fire, taking
names, license numbers, credit cards, but most especially cash for
eats and sleeps.
She tells all the truckers, "If sperm were bait, I'd sell 'em four
bucks a billion and be a rich old broad rather than just an old
broad." Sometimes she gets a five dollar tip for her bawdy humor
and great tits. "There hasn't been but a day or two these last thirty
years with Bill when there weren't at least a couple million
wanting something productive to do with their time." That's her
"clincher." "'Nite folks. Home safe."
Her collection of voices is stored in the fridge with the milk.
The voices of all the girlfriends, drinking buddies, enemies and
lovers often the same; all those who ever screamed their middle of
the night complaints to her and to each other. Too much. Too
little. Either way it's still screams. "Yaaw, yaaw, yaaw."
By looking directly into the Red Mamma's eyes you can see
the exact color of the swirl of the Sheriff's tired laughter as it is
stirred into her fresh-brewed three A.M. coffee, thin-brown and
translucent as the ditch water that collects briefly around the car
wash. Ever since she was a girl she's called it the "car wish."
Saying it never fails to make her smile and make one. "I'm goin' to
the car wish, be back in a minute..." Another hair-thin midnight
domestic dispute coils hard in her stomach, but what makes it
funny is, this time the girl won the bout. Another long wait in the
emergency room as the boy is sewn up. Coffee never tastes so
good as in the middle of the night.
When the heat is unbearable, she drags the mattress from the
fold out bed up to the roof of her and Billie's trailer. At least there,
she is able to approximate sleep: naked, sweating, restless behind
a squat, pre-fab redwood fence she bought in Vegas because it
echoed the architecture of the larger fence Bill put up that winds
around the pool and behind the bungalows, hiding the parking lot
next door, which is gaudily patterned in order of size and price in
plaster statues of saints, owls, deer, and two kinds of Indian chiefs.
They had fought in court a few years back about a boundary line
and couldn't stand to see each other any more.
Observe as she recognizes the ex-con and his party time
blonde because they've been to Baker out of gas and luck before,
and by his bad tattoo--busted this time by a blown engine, a $300
tow from anywhere near home.
"You oughta fill up before you hit Vegas, Son," she drawls
with a lick of cayenne on her tongue; calling him "son," even
though they're the same hard, brown age. She is tan by desert
default, whereas the con gets his color half dozing on L.A. park
benches, his only daytime companions a dry drunk dream of a Full
House and a hundred to one shot at the track.
"A lot of good that did me," he mumbles into the
now-patternless Formica, but at the same time, in his head, over
and over and over and over again he's saying: "Fucking bitch.
Fucking bitch." His girlfriend finds him remarkable in his ability
to think two things at once.
Earlier, he siphoned the remaining six gallons of gas and
traded it with a biker for the price of a single egg sandwich and
coffee, black. Including tip. The two of them sit side-by-side in
the comfortable silence of anonymous brotherhood. The blonde
stands behind them at the busy counter, taking one bite and sip as
she reads the headlines over his shoulder, leaning into him gently,
sweetly sighing the sigh of a repentant but cranky child. Even in
this posture of relative repose her face is harder than winning.
One thing about Baker, California, you can't gamble here.
Not with money anyway. Population: old time horse traders
without horses and lots of folks who got the gambling bug, got
here, and failed for one reason or another to get out. These are
people for whom no moneygram ever glowed bright on the
horizon before the balloon of day popped imperceptibly flat.
They would have slept in the car, I guess, their two heads
upon a single, fetid smoke-filled pillow, stained with beer, saliva
and other more interesting body fluids, but the manager recognizes
in the blonde a sister, and in a rare moment of recognition and
compassion slips her a key on a wink platter. Lettuce, tomato,
pickle, mayo on the side and fries platter. The con winks back
provocatively, having intercepted her secret pass. The sister in the
redhead frowns, which causes her lips to push like oars slowly
through her skin, almost still hiding her failing teeth.
Taking a shit this morning, I stare at the two holes on the
inside ofone of Billie's bathroom doors in Baker, California, home
of The Tallest Thermometer in the World, and wonder at rage.
How, alone at last in the bathroom, the con may have said,
“Fuckin' bitch. Fuck. Fuck.”
to forum